On 03 Oct 2013, at 02:23, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 2 October 2013 00:46, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 01 Oct 2013, at 15:31, Pierz wrote:
Maybe. It would be a lot more profound if we definitely *could*
reproduce
the brain's behaviour. The devil is in the detail as they say. But a
challenge to Chalmer's position has occurred to me. It seems to me
that
Bruno has convincingly argued that *if* comp holds, then
consciousness
supervenes on the computation, not on the physical matter. But
functionalism
suggests that what counts is the output, not the manner in which
it as
arrived at. That is to say, the brain or whatever neural subunit
or computer
is doing the processing is a black box. You input something and
then read
the output, but the intervening steps don't matter. Consider what
this might
mean in terms of a brain.
That's not clear to me. The question is "output of what". If it is
the entie
subject, this is more behaviorism than functionalism.
Putnam's functionalism makes clear that we have to take the output
of the
neurons into account.
Comp is functionalism, but with the idea that we don't know the
level of
substitution, so it might be that we have to take into account the
oputput
of the gluons in our atoms (so comp makes clear that it only ask
for the
existence of a level of substitution, and then show that no machine
can know
for sure its subst. level, making Putnam's sort of functionalism a
bit
fuzzy).
Let's say a vastly advanced alien species comes to earth. It looks
at our
puny little brains and decides to make one to fool us. This
constructed
person/brain receives normal conversational input and outputs
conversation
that it knows will perfectly mimic a human being. But in fact the
computer
doing this processing is vastly superior to the human brain. It's
like a
modern PC emulating a TRS-80, except much more so. When it
computes/thinks
up a response, it draws on a vast amount of knowledge,
intelligence and
creativity and accesses qualia undreamed of by a human. Yet its
response
will completely fool any normal human and will pass Turing tests
till the
cows come home. What this thought experiment shows is that, while
half-qualia may be absurd, it most certainly is possible to
reproduce the
outputs of a brain without replicating its qualia. It might have
completely
different qualia, just as a very good actor's emotions can't be
distinguished from the real thing, even though his or her internal
experience is quite different. And if qualia can be quite
different even
though the functional outputs are the same, this does seem to leave
functionalism in something of a quandary. All we can say is that
there must
be some kind of qualia occurring, rather a different result from
what
Chalmers is claiming. When we extend this type of scenario to
artificial
neurons or partial brain prostheses as in Chamer's paper, we
quickly run up
against perplexing problems. Imagine the advanced alien provides
these
prostheses. It takes the same inputs and generates the same
correct outputs,
but it processes those inputs within a much vaster, more complex
system.
Does the brain utilizing this advanced prosthesis experience a
kind of
expanded consciousness because of this, without that difference
being
detectable? Or do the qualia remain somehow confined to the
prosthesis
(whatever that means)? These crazy quandaries suggest to me that
basically,
we don't know shit.
Hmm, I am not convinced. "Chalmers argument" is that to get a
philosophical
zombie, the fading argument shows that you have to go through half-
qualia,
which is absurd. His goal (here) is to show that "no qualia" is
absurd.
That the qualia can be different is known in the qualia literature,
and is a
big open problem per se. But Chalmers argues only that "no qualia" is
absurd, indeed because it would needs some absurd notion of
intermediate
half qualia.
My be I miss a point. Stathis can clarify this furher.
The argument is simply summarised thus: it is impossible even for God
to make a brain prosthesis that reproduces the I/O behaviour but has
different qualia. This is a proof of comp,
Hmm... I can agree, but eventually no God can make such a prothesis,
only because the qualia is an attribute of the "immaterial person",
and not of the brain, body, or computer. Then the prosthesis will
manifest the person if it emulates the correct level.
If not, even me, can do a brain prothesis that reproduce the
consciousness of a sleeping dreaming person, ...
OK, I guess you mean the full I/O behavior, but for this, I am not
even sure that my actual current brain can be enough, ... if only
because "I" from the first person point of view is distributed in
infinities of computations, and I cannot exclude that the qualia
(certainly stable lasting qualia) might rely on that.
provided that brain physics
is computable, or functionalism if brain physics is not computable.
Non-comp functionalism may entail, for example, that the replacement
brain contain a hypercomputer.
OK.
Bruno
Eventually the qualia is determined by infinitely many number
relations, and
a brain filters them. It does not create them, like no machine can
create
PI, only "re-compute" it, somehow. The anlogy here break sown as
qualia are
purely first person notion, which explains why they are distributed
on the
whole universal dovetailing (sigma_1 arithmetic).
Bruno
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